The Man Who Ended War

“That ought to save the boat,” said Dorothy, shaking her head sadly, “but how can you save Jim from the fate of Dr. Heidenmuller, or of the men on the battleships who died as he did?”

“You never did have much opinion of my brains, Dorothy,” said Tom. “Don’t you suppose I thought of the effect those waves would have? You know none of the other ships in Portsmouth harbor were injured, when the German ship disappeared. That proves that the man has some way of directing his waves. So he may not hurt Jim at all. But I didn’t take any chances on that. I’ve had a cage of caema built over the cockpit, and everything is arranged so that the boat can be run without going outside that cage.”

Dorothy heaved a sigh of relief. She bent forward and kissed Tom in the full face of the assembly.

“Tom, you’re the finest, best man in the world, except one.”

“That’s it,” said Tom with a grin. “Second place for old uncle Thomas now.”

“But Tom,” I said, “I follow the boat construction all right, but for Heaven’s sake what is this caema that I’ve heard so much about, and what’s the use of the cage?”

“Oh, I forgot you might not understand that,” said Tom. “You know, or you ought to know, it’s in every school physics, that if you put a cage of a conductor like copper around any instrument which is easily affected by any electrical discharge, the electrical waves spread out, follow the surface of the cage, and don’t penetrate the interior. The instrument is wholly unaffected. Well, caema is the newest organic conductor. It acts the same way with any radio-active waves. They spread out all over it, and can’t get through. I’ve had a cage built of it to insulate you and everything else that’s inside.”

“Why wouldn’t it work around the battleships then?” I asked.

“Because the battleships are made of steel; and if you put a cage like that around them, they could hardly move. It only worked on your boat because it’s wood outside.”

“Tom,” I said gravely, “I imagine your forethought and knowledge will save my life.”

“I know it will,” said Tom cheerfully. “Now, what time do you leave?”

“In fifty-five minutes, from Charing Cross, on the Channel Express,” I said.

“We’ll go with you to Folkestone,” said Tom.

“Of course,” said Dorothy.

A few minutes at the Savoy, a brief ride down the lighted Strand in the midst of the noisy crowds, a moment in the rush of the station, and a long ride in the darkness, in a full compartment, brought us back to Folkestone.

All the way down I held Dorothy’s hand in my own. All the way down her warm body was close to mine. Despite all Tom’s precautions, something might go wrong, but, if it ended to-night, we had this, and hope persisted that it would not end to-night, that, on the other hand, this was the beginning of many happy years.

The crew of three was on board the little yacht, which looked no different in the dark from any other boat, though, as we came alongside in the skiff, I could just see a cage of some dark substance above the cockpit. We entered through a latticed door toward the bow, and Tom for half an hour examined every part of the boat with a lantern, the caema screen most vigilantly of all. Dorothy and I sat close together, watching the lights and their reflection in the water. All about the pier was hurry and movement. Three tugs, bearing correspondents, passed us as we lay at anchor, and half a dozen despatch boats and cutters. Tom came up to us at last.

“Jim, if you keep the door of the cage fastened, nothing can happen to you.”

“Don’t be foolhardy, though, for my sake,” said Dorothy.

“Come, Dorothy, we must go. It’s time for Jim to start,” said Tom gently, and I strained Dorothy to my heart and felt her wet cheek against mine.

“I’ll be back safely, dear love,” I whispered, as I helped her into the waiting boat.

Tom wrung my hand as he left. “Jim, I’d go with you, but I think I ought to stay with Dorothy.”

“I know you ought,” I replied, and they cast off.

As we started off into the blackness, Dorothy’s clear “Till we meet again, dear,” were the last words that reached me.

Our London office had been able to obtain pretty definite information as regards the whereabouts of the fleet, and our little boat was a marvel of swiftness. So it was with no great surprise that, as the morning dawned, I saw far ahead of me, off the port bow, the rear ships of the squadron going slowly ahead, and shortly after came in sight of the whole fleet. My binoculars showed the greatest spectacle I had ever beheld. From East and West, from North and South had come the hurrying ships to guard the coasts of the great island empire from attack. I counted forty mighty ships as I gazed. In regular formation they went onward, slowly, disdainfully, proudly. Somewhere to the north, beyond that gray line which bordered my view on every side, another fleet was coming. At best, it was to be the greatest trial of naval strength the world had ever seen. All other naval battles would sink into obscurity before this, in which were met the utmost resources of Germany and England. At worst, it would be a series of dumb, helpless disasters, as the fleet, stricken by an unseen, unknown foe, would perish. Near me were two of the boats bearing men from the papers. The men on them jeered as they saw our dark cage, and passed uncomplimentary remarks on the appearance of my boat. I kept silence, watching the line of sky and sea. Out on the farthest point, at last I saw a dot, then half a dozen more, then more, and I counted up to thirty. Over on my right a great splash of water rose, and a dull reverberation sounded. Germany had fired the first shot. The flagship of the English admiral was nearest me, on the extreme left of the line. As I watched, I saw the great ship turn slightly, and I knew by the sound that they had fired in return. Sight availed nothing in telling whence came the shot, for the newest smokeless powder left no trace. The ship swung back on her course, the great flag of the Empire hanging at her stern, scarce lifted by the breeze. I could see figures, through my powerful glasses, hurrying about the decks, and three or four officers on the bridge peering through their glasses at the enemy. I had focussed wholly on the British flagship, and watched intently for her next move. Suddenly my lenses grew blank, and I was staring at sea and sky. The gray waves, rising and falling, filled the field. The battleship had disappeared. I dropped my glasses in utter amaze. I found myself once more repeating the words of Joslinn concerning the Alaska. “Vanished like a bursting soap-bubble.” I looked to right and left. I raised my glasses. Of all that company of men, of all those implements of war and of destruction, not one thing remained. Yes, there was a dark spot on a lifting wave. Eagerly I trained my lenses on it. Now it came up on a higher wave. A gleam of color. It was like cloth. Again it rose. It was the flag of England. Alone it had survived.

“The man” was at work. Where would he strike next? The rest of the fleet went on, as if no blow had come. Not by a sign did they show what had come upon them. I glanced at my wire screen, and at my crew who stood in a huddled group. The correspondents, in the boats nearby, were standing with white faces, peering ahead. I turned my glasses on the German fleet. The leading ship was coming forward, under full steam. A shot struck just to my right, and I realized that peril might come from other sources than from the man who was trying, no, who was stopping all war. But it was all in the game of life. My part in the game just then was to be at that very place, and I thrust back the thought of parting with Dorothy that, despite myself, arose.

Through my glasses, I gazed fixedly at the German ship as she came on. Then, as before, came the utter blankness, the gray sky and the waves rising and falling. One English ship and one German. Where would he strike next? As I asked the question, another English ship disappeared more swiftly than a cloud of light smoke scattered by the wind. I found myself counting aloud. In a state of utter unconsciousness as to anything else, I gazed fixedly to see which would go next. “Four,” I counted, as a German cruiser off on the right went down. “Five! six!” They were going at the rate of one every two or three minutes now. “‘The man’ must be in one spot, and he has the range now,” I said to myself, as two more ships disappeared. Those ships that remained were firing rapidly. Now and again a shot would hit, and a cloud of steel fly out from a turret, or a big hole appear in a side. Their brothers were dying an awful death, the sister ships of the fleet were disappearing before their eyes, but the men who directed those gray bull dogs of war kept on. In a perfect frenzy of excitement, I cheered aloud. “Oh plucky, plucky!” I cried, as the squadrons, closing their thinned ranks, bore down on each other. Twenty had gone from eighty-two, destroyed by this wonder-worker. Ten of the rest were in sore straits. Shots were falling on every side of me, but, in the mad excitement of the moment, I heeded them no more than if they had been paper pellets. Then the death-dealing machine seemed suddenly to accelerate its action. “Twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight,” I counted slowly. The fleets never changed a point of their course. Not by a gun was the fire slackened, save in the few ships disabled by the enemy. The fortieth ship had disappeared for ten minutes. Then, as by a common understanding, the fire of each side slackened for a moment as the ships, closing up their ranks, maneuvered for new positions. In the lessening din, I could hear the chug-chug of the little motor of our boat. That sound always carried me back to the night when Dorothy and I sought the man who saw the Alaska go down. The dark Jersey shore, the little launch, and Dorothy beside me suddenly rose before my eyes, and I was there, and not in the midst of this awful carnage. But it was only for a moment. The pause in the work of destruction ended almost as it began. One after another, twenty-two ships more went down, and the antagonists, who had started with eighty-two of the proudest ships that any empire ever sent forth, were reduced to a shattered remnant of twenty. Then suddenly they gave way. Flesh and blood could stand no more. Slowly, but proudly as ever, and with no haste of flight, the Germans drew off to the north, the English to the south. As they parted, another ship and yet another disappeared. I groaned in impotent agony. “Spare them, spare the rest?” I cried wildly. “Can’t you see they have given up the fight.”

Remorseless in his purpose, the man went on. Again and again, with measured blows, he struck the retreating fleet. One by one, their existence ended, and the now sunlit ripples of the Channel rose and fell, where a moment before had sailed these massive hulks.

I veiled my eyes at the close, but opened them as I felt a touch on my shoulder. “Are we to be killed too, sir?” said my skipper, with twitching lips and corded brow, where the cold sweat stood in great drops. “Can we go now, sir?”

I nodded numbly, and we started. The only boats in sight were two boats of the newspapers, that had lain in apathy near us. As they saw us start, their skippers started, too. The correspondents on their decks sat in stricken attitudes. Not one was writing. They crouched, huddled together, like men dying from cold. The three boats ran towards shore, side by side. With fixed gaze I followed the one on the right. Suddenly, she also disappeared, and I fell into a wild rage. “You fool, you fool,” I cried, shaking my fists. “Don’t you know a non-combatant?”

The men on the boat to the left rose in an agony of alarm, shouted incoherently, waved handkerchiefs. My fury suddenly became extinct, and I watched them apathetically. It would be their turn next, or ours. I had lost all faith in Tom’s protective schemes. One thing ran back and forth in my brain. “If I had only married Dorothy before I came, she could have worn black. Now, as it was, would she or wouldn’t she?” That was the only thing which distressed me. They say a man awaiting instant death thinks over all his past life. I didn’t, I only worried as to whether Dorothy would or would not wear black.

I looked up wearily. The sea was blank. The other boat had gone. “So you went first,” I said, calmly enough now. “I’ve always wondered what the next world was like. Now, I’m going to know.”

Ceaselessly went the chug, chug of the engine. Back and forth into the shuttle of my thought went the Jersey coast, and the problem of whether or not Dorothy would wear black.

The noise ceased in an instant, and I wondered at it dully. The crew sat heavily in the stern, the skipper holding the wheel. I could see his brown, knotted hands white with the anguished grip with which he clasped its rim. We lay in the long swell of the Channel in utter silence. Of all those thousands, we were left alone, rising and falling on the billows, absolutely without energy and without the slightest desire to act. The motor stopped, we could hoist the main sail from the cage, but we thought of no such thing. For minutes, which seemed like hours, we lay there while I gazed indifferently at the water. A hoarse cry from the skipper aroused me.

“Lookee there!” he shouted. I turned at the command and started. Scarce a hundred yards away was the conning tower of a submarine above the waves. Its top was open and a man’s head, the face masked with huge goggles, faced us. As I gazed with open mouth, the head disappeared, the top closed, and the conning tower sunk beneath the waves. I had seen “the man.”

The sight somehow galvanized me into energy. Now I had seen that the antagonist was a human being, and not a superhuman power, I would fight for my life. I ordered the sail raised through the cage, taking great care not to disturb it, and we started slowly back to Folkestone. Hours later, as we came up towards the harbor, I saw a yacht approaching. On the bridge were three figures. There was the flutter of a white dress beside the man at the wheel. As they came nearer, I saw it was the yacht I had chartered for our hunt in the Channel. The man and the girl on the bridge were Tom and Dorothy. As they came alongside, Tom called.

“What happened?”

I raised my head. “We four are all that are left,” I said sadly.

CHAPTER XVIII

As I came over the side of the yacht, Dorothy was at the rail and in a moment was in my arms. “Thank God! Thank God! you are back,” she murmured. “You are back and the awful waiting is over, but how many wives and sweethearts will wait all the rest of their lives!”

Tom was but a moment behind his sister. “Do you mean to say that every boat, without exception, has gone?” he questioned.

“Every one within my range of vision. Between eighty and ninety in all,” I answered.

“Good God! What a catastrophe,” said Tom dazedly. “I can’t realize it.”

My little yacht was still alongside, and the skipper now hailed us. “Mr. Orrington, sir, could somebody else take our boat in, and could we go with you? I think, sir, we’d feel easier, if we could go with you.”

There was something to do. In a few minutes an exchange had been made, and my crew was on the larger yacht. As they came over the rail, Tom met them with a low request to keep their mouths shut.

“Don’t fear us,” said my skipper. “We’re alive, that’s all we ask for. We don’t have any call or wish to talk about it. Do we, mates?” The other men shook their heads dumbly, and went slowly to their places.

“What became of your propeller?” asked Tom, coming back towards us.

“Disappeared. Your rubber valves closed the hole.”

“Then he tried to sink you.”

“Undoubtedly,” I answered. “It was your wooden boat and cage of caema which saved me.”

As we made for Folkestone, we met other boats hurrying out on the Channel. Tom had ventured out farther than any one else. One by one, they hailed us, but our captain gave them no news and made on.

“I wish I knew what to do,” I said wearily. “I can’t write this thing. I feel stunned and broken. I’m not sure what I ought to do, anyway. Any ordinary or even extraordinary thing is proper journalistic stuff, but this is too big, somehow, for individual use. Yet the one thing that ought to be done is to get the news to the world as soon as possible.”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” said Dorothy hesitatingly. “Isn’t your London correspondent to be in Folkestone waiting for you?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Well, ask him. You and I will go ashore, and Tom can put out with the yacht. Then there will be no chance of the sailors’ telling anything.”

“All right,” I answered. “I don’t seem to care what happens.”

Folkestone Pier was a black mass of people looking out to sea as we came in, and a surging crowd came towards us, as Dorothy and I landed, while our boat, with Tom in the stern, shot back towards the yacht. Had it not been for three or four policemen, we could not have forced our way through the jam, but by their aid we managed to struggle through, shaking our heads in response to the thousand questions. As the human tide ebbed back towards the end of the pier, I heard my name and turned. It was Maxwell, our London correspondent.

“What news?” he asked eagerly, when he reached me.

“I’ll tell you, if you’ll get us out of this crowd,” I answered.

“I’ve got a motor here. Come on,” he said, and we made our way out, boarded the motor and started slowly off. I looked at the chauffeur.

“Run out to a quiet place where we can be alone, will you?” I said to Maxwell.

In a few moments we had cleared the town, and were on the bluff above the sea. There was no one around. “This will do,” I said.

As we descended, Maxwell looked questioningly at Dorothy.

“This is my fiancée, Miss Haldane,” I explained. “I forgot to introduce you. She knows the whole story.”

Just where we paused, an iron seat faced the wide expanse of blue and shining water, and for a moment I gazed out over the Channel and breathed a silent prayer of thanksgiving for my escape, of remembrance for the men who lay beneath that flood. Then I turned, and began my story. Ere I had spoken a dozen words, Maxwell had his note book out, writing rapidly. Throughout, he wrote without a question, without a word. As I ended, he closed his note book slowly.

“What we want to know, Mr. Maxwell,” said Dorothy anxiously, “is the right thing to do. Should this go straight to the paper, or ought it to go first to the English government? You see there’s probably no living man who saw this except Jim and his sailors, and we want to do right. We want to do right by the men that died, and the people that remain.”

Wise, able, thoughtful, a scholar and a gentleman, a great journalist, a man who counted among his friends the greatest men of two countries, – no man could be found who could decide such a question better than Maxwell. He looked at Dorothy.

“That was the very question in my mind, Miss Haldane,” he answered. “But I think there’s only one answer. I believe we should take this straight to the King. He is at Buckingham Palace, and I believe we should go directly to him with the story. I have met him a number of times, and I know we can get an audience immediately.”

“I’m very glad you think so,” I said. “How about the trains?”

“We can do it better in my car,” he replied.

Ten minutes for gasolene, and we started off. Through quiet villages where red farmhouses stood framed in vivid green, by tower and manor house embowered in ancient oaks, through hedge-rowed land and city street we sped, till the rows of villas, each modelled from a single type, showed the outskirts of London. Then, at a slower pace, we passed through a smoky fog, across the river, by the Abbey, to the long front of Buckingham Palace. All the way we sat silent under the heavy burden of the news that brought the end of those long centuries of unconquerable British power. No enemy who could be conquered had they met. The day had come for peace, and Britain and Germany had been the greatest sufferers in the change of epochs.

Past the red-coated sentry, to the door of the palace we drove. A few words on a card brought a secretary with a startled face, and scarce five minutes had elapsed before Maxwell was ushered in. Dorothy and I remained in the car. As Maxwell left, he remarked, “Orrington, under any ordinary circumstances, I’d ask for an audience for you, but now there’s no time to be lost. I can get an immediate interview alone, where I could not get one with you.”

“That’s all right,” I said apathetically, “I’m glad not to be obliged to move.”

We waited before the palace the better part of an hour before the door opened and Maxwell emerged. As he came towards us, I could see that he was blowing his nose vigorously, and that his eyes were moist. He got into the car without a word, but as we swung over the bridge into the Park, Maxwell made his first remark, staring off into vacancy, “I always thought the King was about the finest man that England held. Now I know it.”

That was all I ever learned of the interview, but, as we came by the Abbey, I heard a newsboy crying, “Destruction of the fleets,” and I looked inquiringly at Maxwell. He nodded in reply, “We published it first. I telephoned the news from the palace.”

Weary and sad as I was, broken with the horror of the day, my purpose had become stronger than ever before. As we ran slowly through Whitehall and around to the Savoy, the thoughts of the past were disappearing in cogitations as to the effect this would have upon our search for “the man.” Though every battleship in the world was sunk, my purpose held good. I would find the destroyer.

The next morning came a startling announcement. The King of England, the President of the United States, the President of the French Republic, the Mikado of Japan, and the Czar of Russia issued an immediate call for representatives of all nations to assemble at The Hague to consider the question of disarmament. That, in itself, differed but little from the other summonses which had resulted in academic discussions, but the paragraph which succeeded the call was one of the most extraordinary the world had ever seen. The five rulers who issued this invitation each pledged himself to do everything in his power to bring about complete disarmament, and to end war in the whole world. In view of the urgency of the situation, the meeting was to be held in a month at The Hague.

It was soon learned that the initiative in this step had come from the King of England, that the four other rulers had gladly joined with him in the action, when asked concerning it by wireless, and that the Emperor of Germany had been invited to make one of the number, but had refused. That seemed to leave Germany as the stumbling-block in the way. Complete disarmament was wholly possible if every nation were to agree. If a single powerful nation refused to disarm, it became practically an impossibility, – for no nation would give up her defenses, with a powerful armored foe at her gates.

I had scarcely finished reading the account in the morning paper, as a waiter approached with a wireless message from the office. “Take three weeks’ vacation, and then go to Hague as special correspondent for peace conference.”

“Confound it!” I ejaculated, as I read the missive. “Look at this,” and I passed the paper over to Tom and Dorothy. Tom’s face fell.

“Of course it’s a good thing in a way,” said Tom, “but it takes you right off the track of ‘the man.’”

“I refuse to go off the track,” I said warmly. “I’m going to wire them back refusing this.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t do that,” interrupted Dorothy eagerly. “You stand almost, or quite as much of a chance to get news of ‘the man’ at the peace conference, as elsewhere. We can take the wave-measuring machine right over to The Hague, and work from there. Besides, I want the three weeks’ vacation.”

“Better take the vacation, and put it in with me down at Cambridge,” remarked Tom. “They’re doing some work in one of the colleges that might help me with the Denckel machine. I’d like to watch it awhile, and see its bearing on the case. Dorothy would have enjoyed it once, but now she’s hopeless. You two can come down, though, and roam round for three weeks there, as well as anywhere else. It’s a jolly country, and we’ll have a good time.”

“Well, if you feel convinced it’s the thing to do, I’ll do it,” I said resignedly. “But I want to put in three weeks here in London, getting things together. We’ve never run down that Cragent clue yet.”